Thursday, January 5, 2012

New Adventures on the Farm

The year 2011 proved to be a tough year on the farm. I even nicknamed it the "angel of death" of animals that is.  We have buried 1 horse, 2 Cows, 3 calves, 2 dogs, an unknown amount of cats have died, and I believe 9 chickens. I never thought that I would get use to the death of one of our animals and I never thought that my sweet little 4 year old would already be "use" to animals dying on the farm. Last year we got "use" to animals dying, we weren't all that surprised anymore when another would die, but it did take a toll on us.


Brandon has always loved having cows, even when we first started dating I remember him talking about his dreams to run like a hundred cows on all this land that he was someday going to own. It took some getting use to but I knew when I said yes I will marry you that I was going to be married to a man that would always live on a farm and at the time I thought we would always have cows.


When we bought the house we live in, we bought it with the Cows in mind. There were other houses we looked at but none of them had the buildings and the land lay out that this house has. We sold a lot of cows just to have money for a down payment for the house, and then we moved up here with I believe 10 Cows (I don't know Cows, Calves, Steers, heifers, etc total I believe there were 10). Brandon was prepared to rebuild his "herd", he kept the best ones, and was excited to have cows at his own place. But not everything went as planned, cows started dying, money started getting tight, and things were just tough.


So this past summer Brandon started thinking about selling the rest of the Cows and getting pigs. He mentioned it to our very opinionated daughter, Teagan and she started crying. She didn't want to sell the cows, and she definitely didn't want pigs!! We prayed a lot about what God had planned for us and Brandon decided that selling the Cows was the right decision. The cows went right from the pasture to the buyer so it worked out really well. Teagan still talks a little bit about Vanessa her favorite cow but she has really enjoyed helping Daddy go pick up the pigs and feed them. 


This was a really tough decision for Brandon and I can't even begin to tell you what an amazing husband he is. I was a little worried about him selling the cows since I knew that was his dream and what he really wanted, I kept saying are you sure?? is this really what you want to do?? Brandon's response was that he wanted what was best for his family, priorities change when you become a husband and a Dad and the  pigs allow him to still have his love and hobby of having livestock but he will have more time for his family now without the cows and that he will be able to provide better for his family. Yep, He's pretty amazing!! (most of the time)  :) 


So now we have Dora, Piggy, and Diego with some more coming in Feb...................


On to New Adventures at the Sowers Ranch! 

1 comment:

  1. fun! :) and you are right, he is a great hubster and daddy!

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